Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
strollers and shoppers. Salamanca Place is distinguished by its Georgian warehouses and
Battery Point by its colonial houses.
Adelaide, the capital of southern Australia, with a population of about 1.2 million,
is built alongside the Torrens River, about four miles from the coast. It is a city laid out
on a right-angled grid. Named after the wife of King William IV (Victoria's predecessor),
Adelaide's founders almost came to grief by fixing on a scheme proposed by Edward
Wakefield. Wakefield, who was once imprisoned for a crime against property (abducting
a fifteen-year-old heiress!), had a plan for colonial prosperity. Under his plan, coloniza-
tion would best proceed by recognizing that land is usually abundant in far-flung places,
but capital and labor are scarce. Therefore, open a new colony to wealthy men with con-
siderable capital, who would then invest in civic improvement and have funds to attract
necessary labor. Workmen would be well paid, and those with capital would earn a hand-
some return on their investment. As has been many times remarked (especially by those
who admire Edmund Burke), few things work as well in practice as in theory. And so the
Wakefield scheme figured mostly in the planning but not in the realities of Adelaide's early
years.
What did contribute to Adelaide's prosperity and attractive cityscape was the availab-
ility of a pleasing blue stone for buildings and the original grid pattern that laid out broad
streets, including a one-square mile business district and generous parklands. Today's
Adelaide has a university, a strikingly modern festival center that is host to the biggest arts
festival in Australia, and Rundle Mall, the first enclosed shopping mall in Australia. Above
and beyond these attractions, Adelaide is gateway to one of Australia's major wine-produ-
cing areas, not to mention the city's proximity to a body of water with a provocative name:
The Great Australian Bight.
Perth, the capital of western Australia, with a population of about 1.7 million, receives
cruise-ship travelers at its deep-water port of Freemantle, about ten miles from the center of
Perth. Both cities lie on the banks of the Swan River, a name that by rights should be called
the Black Swan River (the river was discovered in 1677 by the Dutch explorer Willem de
Vlamingh and was named for the black swans swimming there). Perth is the biggest city
in Australia's west, closer to Singapore and Bali than to Sydney. Until the end of the Se-
cond World War and the end of Australia's whites-only policy, Perth turned its back on its
neighbors to the east. British settlement began in 1829, but the tyranny of continental dis-
tance kept Perth's population small until gold strikes to the north (1890) sent the population
spiraling.
Darwin, capital of the state of Northern Territory, with a population of about 1.35 mil-
lion, is a surprise. By geography, it is Australia's most tropical city, lying on the Torres
Strait close to New Guinea. It is also Australia's most modern city, twice destroyed and
twice rebuilt. In World War II it was extensively bombed by the Japanese and was rebuilt
mostly in its previous incarnation. In 1974 Cyclone Terry destroyed the entire city. Two-
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